I’ve been re-examining questions I once took for granted. Why make an exhibition? Why choose to become a curator? Where does the autonomy of art lie? How do we understand the present art ecology and the conditions in which we work? An artwork has its own order and context. An exhibition theme, meanwhile, builds one of its own. At the heart of research-led curating is the question of how these two orders meet. If a paper or an article can explain the issue, why is an exhibition necessary? How can we translate and interpret without losing information or introducing ambiguity? How can an exhibition bring viewers into the presence of perceptions and experiences in artistic practice that resist words?
Behind these questions lies a deeper relation of power. Many people make exhibitions or become curators not out of a genuine love of art, but to enter the art world and gain a voice within it. The exhibition itself then becomes something consumed by capital or power.
To curate is to establish why an exhibition needs to exist. For me, there are two reasons. The first is to work for artists and grow alongside them: to make an exhibition because a particular artist’s work needs to be shown, and to give a platform to artists of great promise who have yet to be discovered. The second is the exhibition as a medium in its own right, offering a distinct perspective and way of presenting art.
The following notes are drawn from
Dawei Fei’s talks on 21–22 September 2024
at “Charging Station 2024”, a workshop within the Emerging Curators Project at The Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai.
Author:
Richie Xiang
The Eye
“An eye for art on the one hand, and perceptiveness on the other.”
Here, I want to talk about having an eye.
Someone with an eye can tell whether a person is telling the truth or lying, whether an exhibition is genuine or contrived, and whether a work is authentic and what it is worth.
In curating and art research, you have to train your eye. Can you recognise in a second that an artist is remarkable, or do you need ten hours? You have to look, and keep looking; the more you see, the more experience you gain. Our work is to help the artists who most need our help. Do not confine yourself to the label “professional curator”. It should be more than a job title.
What kind of eye do you bring to the world? Look at the room we are in, the curtains open and sunlight pours in. Did you notice? Isn’t that part of the language of an exhibition?
We are in art at every moment. The world itself is an immense exhibition, and a changing world speaks the language of exhibitions. You need to observe it closely, to look at it as a curator at every moment, to see and invent it creatively, to feel it in different ways. That means the world in time as well as the world in space.
An Exhibition Is the Invention of a Situation That Does Not Yet Exist
Curating is itself a creative act. You should make an exhibition when the desire to express something becomes impossible to contain, and an exhibition is the form it must take. As a creative act, an exhibition does not replace the artist’s work; it discovers that work and brings more of it into view.
To make an exhibition is to enter a process of change. The process is uncertain, constantly shifting, unpredictable and unrepeatable. That is what makes it singular. Inspiration, intuition and process are the soul of an exhibition.
There are at least two kinds of exhibition: one led by the artist, and another driven by research. I often feel that many research-led exhibitions would be better as papers. An exhibition should first bring the artist’s value into view. How can the work stir a viewer’s sense of creativity? If an exhibition needs a great deal of conceptual explanation, it may make a very good assignment, but it is unlikely to move people.
The Curator
In the 1990s, “curator” became a fashionable identity. Some curators made themselves the stars of their exhibitions and treated artists as props. I strongly oppose that.
Curators should identify questions of their own. Do not simply follow existing debates or fashionable topics. Pose your own questions and find new ways to tell their stories.
How well do you know the artists you work with? You curate because there is a real need to show a particular artist’s work. Seek out those you believe have the greatest promise but have yet to be discovered.
Something excellent may cost very little. What matters is finding the most effective way to do something, and that way may not already exist. Take Huang Yong Ping: he put two art history books through a washing machine. The result became a classic.
Distance
Many young artists and curators struggle to find a path of their own, or to see the present art ecology clearly. Perhaps we are too close to the art system. We need to step back to see it as a whole; once we are deep inside it, the whole disappears from view.
Art Cannot Be a Tool for Anything
Art cannot be made a tool for anything else. It exists on a higher plane.
The conditions you face are entirely different from those I faced. I do not think your challenges are any fewer than ours were. But creativity comes from constraint. Faced with these constraints, you can do better.
Filtering Out the Froth
In 2004, I curated a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Lyon. After it closed, the museum’s director said to me: “This may be the last time the West mounts an exhibition of Chinese contemporary art on this scale. Since Magiciens de la Terre in 1989, people have taken an interest in non-Western art. But much of this was help offered from a position of superiority. We took pleasure in it and played the stronger party. China is rising. In future, if you come to the West to exhibit, you may have to pay for it yourselves—and we may not even want to work with you.”
I thought he was frank and sincere. I also thought it was a good thing, and an inevitable process. History moves in cycles. When will Chinese curators, in turn, be able to help Western artists?
I feel an increasing distance between myself and your generation. Looking back at the 1980s and 1990s, I see both groundbreaking advances and limitations. The art of those decades drew attention across the world and brought with it a certain sense of superiority. Even then, I could see that some of the excitement had been inflated.
From 2005 to 2008, Chinese contemporary art went through a period of unprecedented frenzy. Investment ventures began targeting it, raising funds and speculating as though it were venture capital. Investors drove prices up through auction houses. In just three years, works by some artists rose in price several hundredfold, in some cases even a thousandfold. Western museums around the world also raised the visibility of Chinese contemporary art, mounting exhibition after exhibition, while media reports were filled with China’s economic miracle and artistic rise.
Now that the boom in Chinese contemporary art has cooled, that may not be a bad thing for us. It can filter out a great deal of froth.
